“To Thine Own Self Be True”



Wednesday, June 5, 2013

The Vault Door Is Open! by Darren Hardy

Until recently only the elites atop corporate ivory towers had the keys to the vault of the world’s wealth. Power, thus wealth, was controlled by access—access to knowledge, technology, capital, resources and distribution through print publications, broadcasting, cable and store shelves. Now the vault door has been blown off, and everyone has direct and unlimited access to all the wealth they want by becoming entrepreneurs. I co-founded an Internet company in early 2000. We raised several million dollars to get started. Building the website, the software to run it and servers to deliver it cost nearly $1 million. Today that website could be built for less than $5,000. We spent the other millions to hire experienced tech talent (we paid a high price because of limited supply) and on marketing in the days before Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. The business failed. Do you know how many times I could have launched with the same effort, time and money today? Guess.564! Do you get the point? Today your chance at entrepreneurial success is 564 times greater than just 13 years ago. And my calculations don’t even consider newly available… Knowledge: (Khan Academy, the OpenCourseWare Consortium, Academic Earth, iTunesU) Open-source technology residing in the cloud (Apache, Linux, Perl, SugarCRM) Crowdfunding (Kickstarter, WeFunder, Startup Addict, Quirky, StartSomeGood) Merchandise supply (Alibaba, Made-in-China.com, GlobalSources.com, TradeKey.com) And customer access (a global market of 2.4 billion people on Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Need help? Hungry freelance talent is all around (Elance.com, oDesk.com, 99designs.com, fiverr.com). Today’s entrepreneurs can positively impact millions of people and bring about change on a scale that was impossible before. In short, there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. It has never been easier to create something extraordinary from nearly nothing, take control of your future and experience lifestyle freedom. The vault door is open. Create something valuable and take all the wealth you want. You have plenty of chances to get it wrong, and the rewards are awesome if you get only one thing right.